🪱 Nematode Startup

Unicorn startups.

Named for their exceptional rarity of having extremely high valuations, but like a mythical unicorn, it feels like black box magic. I once set my login profile pic to a robot unicorn for good luck’s sake.

Last year, I came across the idea of a camel startup - unlike unicorns being metaphors for a phenomenon, the camel is a metaphor for a mindset, being able to survive harsh environments without requiring a constant stream of investment to sustain itself.

Reading the book A Brief History of Intelligence, I found another metaphor.

To study how consciousness evolved to be, the author studied nematodes, a multicellular microscopic roundworm with only a few “emotions”, so simple that it’s categorized by a 2x2 grid: positive or negative, high or low arousal (valence). Interestingly, they chose the worm as a starting point, as many believe that intelligence didn’t begin with language or memory, but with navigation.

Navigation - I learned that the founders of iRobot, the ones who created the Roomba vacuum cleaner, was working in MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Intelligence is moving through the world in a way that keeps you alive; it’s about sensing the world, and knowing what to do next.

What struck me was the simplicity of it all. A nematode doesn’t gather sufficient information to map out its surroundings. It simply smells food increasing → keep going in the same direction; smell predator → move faster; smell nothing → turn. Simple signals, correct reactions, staying alive.

I’m building a nematode startup.

Make something people like, track signals. If they like it → keep going; if they don’t → turn: make the product better, or make what they now tell you that they need. That’s the loop.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, there’s just so much to learn and so much to do, so much we haven’t accomplished yet. But it’s the same situation at the beginning of intelligence, a human baby, not knowing how to walk, to cook, to walk itself to work, to cook for its future children…but babies don’t get overwhelmed by their lack of skills or knowledge. They look at their simple selves, and at the unexplored world, in pure wonder.